Re: Skyscraper Graveyard II: Jealousy and Ambition

Originally Posted by the_druid_droid

No, see, the real injustice is that pi/tau is such an ugly number in and of itself. My (Mage) solution is to just change the global curvature of space so that pi = 3. Then you don't even need a name for it!

But who says it's such an ugly number? We don't know why pi/tau has the value it does, perhaps there is a mindblowingly beautiful reason and you're going to blow that up just to make it look superficially simple

And what would be the wider consequences of your plan? Changing pi to be exactly 3 will affect a LOT of fundamental stuff about the universe. A LOT!

And I am Pinkie'd, of course

Originally Posted by Thanqol

Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerds.

And proud!

Originally Posted by Anarion

Do you really think this will make a difference? It doesn't change most of the equations, it just removes a 2 from some places. Okay, now there are tau radians instead of 2pi, and the volume of a sphere is 2/3tau(r^3). But the 2 on 2pi tends to pop in and out during most physics equations, a lot of times it drops off. I had a physics teacher in college tell the whole class that if you're ever feeling like you did a problem right but the answer is off, just check for any combination of pi, 2, or 2pi and see if that fixes the problem.

For all that you've been saying that dividing by two isn't a huge deal when teaching kids, is multiplying by 2 really such a huge deal that we should overturn an entire industry convention and force people to rewrite new computer programs and algorithms because they're not supposed to draw on pi anymore?.

Yes, I really do think it will make a HUGE difference, for the reasons I've tried to express above. Pi is screwing over a lot of students who would benefit from something so very simple as just replacing 2pi with tau, not for the practicality of it in particular but for the conceptual understanding.

Also a matter of truth and correctness, dammit! *angry fist shaking!*

And very little if any rewriting of programs would be needed. The computer doesn't care whether you call it 2pi or tau, it's the same exact number. Also the symbol tau was chosen exactly to avoid many such issues, because it's already an existing symbol.

Originally Posted by Tiki Snakes

But the discovery of Pi helped the sum total of human knowledge considerably. It's a useful tool, something that helps raise up mankind. (regardless of whether there's a tidier way of writing it), which is surely themeatically the opposite of what the Seers are about? Don't question the world, don't investigate it. Sit back, have a macdonalds and if you really need to work something out, you can always just use a calculator anyway.

Pi is screwing over millions of students worldwide, preventing them from grasping concepts that could lead them on to a path of enlightenment and understanding. If that is not a Seer plot, I don't know what is.